Ring this in: cellphones don't cause brain cancer

Toronto: It is official: cellphones don't increase the risk of brain cancer.

A long-term study has found there is no link between brain tumor and the use of cellphones. The study among Scandinavian people from 1974 and 2003 has found that the use of cell phones did not increase brain tumour risk among users.

"We did not observe an effect of mobile phones on the incidence of brain tumours,'' study leader Isabelle Deltour of the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Copenhagen told a Canadian television network in Toronto on Thursday.

As part of this extensive study, 16 million people in Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden were tracked for what happened to rates of glioma and meningioma brain tumours among them over 30 years.

But the researchers found that only 60,000 of them developed brain tumours. This rate of brain tumour was not higher than that seen before the use of cell phones began.

The study found that there was no increase in risk. If there was any increase in risk, it was too small to be observed or the period needed for cell phones to cause brain tumours was longer than the period studied.

The Scandinavian study commenced just when cell phones were introduced.

"If there was a connection, we would have expected a sudden marked increase in the rates, especially among younger males, which were the first to use cells phones.

We didn't see that,'' Deltour told CTV.

However, the researchers stressed that more longer-term studies are needed to prove that the use of cell phone does not raise the risk of brain cancer. They said they will continue monitoring to see if it takes longer to detect changes in tumour rates.

Another international study on the link between cell phone use and brain cancer is likely to come out next year.

The Scandinavian study has appeared in Journal of the National Cancer Institute.